education

RECENT POSTS

November 9, 2011 | 2:16 PM | By

Rwanda is empowering girls, with a little help from Seattle

RGI

The first class of the Rwanda Girls Initiative, launched by two Seattle women

It has become a mantra in aid and development circles today to say that empowering girls is the single most effective means of fighting poverty, inequity and any number of ills in poor countries.

This is one of the international community’s top priorities, for good reason.

But saying and doing are two different things. Talk is cheap, they say.

Paul Kagame’s government in Rwanda is clearly walking the talk on girls and women — and a number of Seattle organizations are assisting in the gender revolution happening here. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, agriculture, education, Gashora, girls, Ralph Coolman, Rwanda, Rwanda Girls Initiative, Suzanne Sinegal McGill, women's rights
October 25, 2011 | 10:24 AM | By

Global gender gap map for education

The Guardian often has some very cool, informative online graphics. Here’s another one — an interactive map that shows the “gender gap” in education by countries over time. As reported:

Raising the ratio of girls to boys in education was one of the eight millennium development goals agreed by world leaders in 2000. But despite 10 years of commitments – and progress in some regions – closing the gap remains a significant challenge.

Go to the link. Below is just a screen grab:

The Guardian

Afghanistan retains over time the dubious distinction of having the most inequitable education in terms of gender disparity.

The interactive map allows review for both primary and secondary education. As The Guardian’s Claire Provost notes in a separate article today, the needs for improvement on secondary education (in general, not just in terms of gender parity) are especially acute in Africa. Says Provost:

Two thirds of African children are effectively locked out of secondary school, according to a new UN report which cites secondary education as one of the next great development challenges facing many of the world’s poorest countries.

FILED UNDER: Basics, education, gender
September 30, 2011 | 10:12 AM | By

The wisdom of educating Rwandan women

I’ve written a lot on Humanosphere about how young people, aka the Millennials, are especially interested these days in trying to make the world a better place. It is definitely a phenomenon.

Last night, at a small gathering in a Queen Anne home, I met some young women from Rwanda who are among those trying to make Rwanda a better place — helped by another young Millennial, American Elizabeth Dearborn Davis, who moved to the central-east African nation to start a girls school.

It’s called “Akilah” – Swahili for wisdom.

Tom Paulson

Rwandan student Allen Kazarwa talks with Sharon Woolf at Seattle fund-raiser for Akilah

“When you tell people you are from Rwanda many just think of the genocide,” said Allen Kazarwa, a 20-year-old student at the Akilah Institute for Women (yes, it’s spelled Allen, not Ellen). Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Akilah, Bill Gates Sr., education, Frank Greer, girls, Rwanda, women
September 18, 2010 | 9:36 PM | By

Bill Gates and “Superman”

Next week, Bill Gates will help publicize the release of a new movie (in which he’s also featured) about the crisis in education called “Waiting for Superman” — directed by the same guy who made “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Education reform is big on the Gates Foundation agenda and is key to development here at home.

My fellow NPR blogger Tina Barseghian, who covers education, wrote about it on her blog MindShift noting that Gates will be among those appearing on Monday’s Oprah to discuss the documentary.

The LA Times said Gates provides “the film’s most newsworthy moment” because of his promotion of the charter school idea. An editorial in the Toronto Star takes exception to the idea.

I saw the trailer and I’m already hooked. No matter where people stand on education reform, I bet this movie is going to be a big hit. (It may not win anyone the Nobel Peace Prize, however.)

FILED UNDER: Basics, Politics, Bill Gates, education
September 17, 2010 | 10:08 AM | By

Educating Mothers Saves Children’s Lives

It’s perhaps no surprise to find that better-educated mothers do better at improving the health of their children, but it may surprise some to see how much of a difference this can make — and that it matters much more than economic gain.

IHME

Child Mortality vs Maternal Education, Nicaragua

Between 1970 and 2009, mortality in children under age 5 dropped from 16 million to 7.8 million annually worldwide. Seattle researchers who studied this phenomenon in 175 countries report today in the Lancet that more than half of this reduction in child mortality (51 percent) can be attributed to improvements in education among women of reproductive age.

To the right is just one of their “scatterplots” for Nicaragua (go to their paper to get more info re the details) showing quite dramatically how child mortality plummets as maternal education rises — even if GDP per capita declines. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Health, Science, child mortality, education, health metrics, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, maternal health
August 3, 2010 | 9:00 AM | By

Deworming & Teachers Better than Computers for Education

OPLC

Mike McGregor, Wikimedia

One Laptop Per Child

The “One Laptop Per Child” scheme — which appears to have stalled lately — was based on the idea that providing children in poor countries with cheap ($100) computers would improve their educational prospects.

It was about bridging the digital divide.

But here’s an interesting, if a bit longish, article that contends the real problem for child education in poor communities is not lack of access to technology.

The author, Philanthropy Action editor Timothy Ogden, cites a host of studies showing that health improvements such as ridding children of debilitating, parasitic worms or programs that simply provide more teachers are much more likely to produce scholastic achievement than giving kids laptops.

FILED UNDER: Basics, Justice, education, One Laptop Per Child